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Aida Sivestri

Our trip to London consisted of visiting four galleries; Guest Projects, Roman Road, Laura Bartlett Gallery and White Cube. I had never previously visited any of these so was looking forward to exploring new locations.

Image by Peter Donnelly

I was really pleased and excited that we would have either the artist or curator talking to us about the work exhibited at each of the galleries because you do not get that opportunity on a normal outing to a gallery. They talk about the work in such detail with so much passion that you leave knowing everything and more about the show.

We began our trip by visiting the On Landscape Project at Guest Projects. This show was a collaboration between Minna Kantonen, Dafna Talmor and Emma Wieslander, with Minna Pöllänen brought in to create a site specific piece. All being female curators gives the exhibition a sense of fragility and femininity. The aim of the show was to challenge the traditional representation of landscape. Three of the four artists were there to talk to us about their work, how it was created and why. Each artists work had its own separate section. The fact that they were all in one room but separate shows how they can work on their own but together they are one and work together strongly.

“A central element of the exhibition consists of an open call for self-published, handmade or short run books relating to the exhibition framework. The publications, on display throughout the exhibition, aim to provide a platform for wider debates around landscape whilst presenting an opportunity for a wide range of practitioners to showcase their work.” Work was chosen by Lucy Soutter with Martin Barnes, Miranda Gavin and Sue Steward.

Image by Dafna Talmor

I particularly enjoyed the images created by Dafna Talmor, as they were so innovative. They had been constructed by layering negatives and using a scalpel to remove areas of the image. This resulted in “photographs create a space that defies specificity, refers to the transient and metaphorically blurs place, memory and time.”